Drunk sailors fail in James Bond speedboat stunt

Two drunken sailors who tried to copy James Bond when escaping from a police boat by flying onto the land were injured after hitting a bank head on at more than 50 miles an hour.

Austrian river police had been called and told that a motorboat had been spotted travelling at night at high speed down the river Rhine through the mountainous western province of Vorarlberg.

Officers managed to find the speeding boat and gave chase but instead of stopping, the two drunken sailors in the 160 horsepower high-speed motorboat decided to try and jump over the causeway, planning apparently to flee after that.

But instead of successfully landing on the meadow near the Austrian town of Hard, the pair ended up smashing head first into the causeway destroying the boat's propeller and smashing part of the hull on the rocks as a result. By the time police came ashore the pair had vanished, but officers equipped with night-vision glasses and using sniffer dogs eventually tracked them down 30 minutes later.

The pair were treated for light injuries and then, after the details had been taken, were allowed to go home while police prepare a report for prosecutors. The damage to the boat was reportedly extensive and police had to bring in a crane to remove it after it became embedded in the causeway.

The pair are unlikely to face jail but, as well as leaving their expensive boat a write-off, it is expected they will have to foot the cost of the rescue operation that included police divers when it was thought they might have drowned and which is likely to be over 36,000 EUR.

Kangaroo That Hopped It Spotted In Garden
Austrian police investigating reports of an escaped kangaroo have been given concrete proof after a local woman managed to photograph the animal in her back garden.

First Images Of Eurovision Stage
These are the first images of the design for the Eurovision Song Contest stage unveiled in the Austrian capital Vienna which is the home of last year's winner Conchita Wurst.

Penelope Cruz To Play The Ice Cream Killer
The memoirs of the woman dubbed the Ice Cream Killer after she shot dead two ex-lovers before hacking the bodies up with a chainsaw and telling neighbours the noise was a new ice cream machine are due to be turned into a blockbuster with Penelope Cruz playing the lead role.

Our ombudsman David Rogers will try and help solve some of the problems from lazy civil servants through to incompetent companies – and at the very least the worst transgressors will end up in our weekly special report.